There is a very interesting article over on Damn Interesting about the building of the Baikal-Amur Magistral (BAM) railway line in north-eastern Siberia, part of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The line is considered by many as “perhaps the greatest civil engineering endeavour the world has ever seen”. Actually a very sad story for many of the world war II POWs from Japan and Germany.
A line through the Wild East!
Not to forget the many Russian (and other USSR) prisoners who were sent there…
But a couple of points - the BAM is always regarded as distinct from the Trans-Siberian proper. And I’m not sure I would describe it as being in “North East” Siberia - if you look at an overall map (such as at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Map_Trans-Siberian_railway.png ) you’ll realise how much further North and East the country extends. (The Soviet Union had a set of maps of in four sheets (NW, SW, NE & SE) to show various things - including railways - but there were none on the NE sheet!)
